The Bad News Is the Good News for Parents

Being a parent educator is both a serious responsibility and a deep joy

Parents have the right and responsibility to oversee their children's education. fizkes/Shutterstock

I’m a Brussels sprouts before the cheesecake kind of guy, so let’s get the bad news out of the way first: You’re responsible for your children’s education. It doesn’t matter what school your son or daughter attends—a mediocre public school, the best private academy in the city, or homeschool—you’re the one who bears the weight in the end: the CEO of Operation Education.

Yes, you can blame the teachers and the curricula if your son enters eighth grade unable to read “Tom Sawyer” or if your high school daughter can’t compute 8 times 30 without using her fingers, and certainly all those years your child sat in a classroom may then appear a desert of time and resources. And yes, the school is at fault for that failure.

Unfortunately, so are you. You figured school was a wrap. All you had to do was get the kids there on time, dressed, lunch and books in hand, and then pick them up at the end of the day. Theoretically, that’s the way it’s supposed to work, but lots of things are broken these days.

OK. Enough of the bad news. Here’s the good news: You’re responsible for your children’s education.

The teachers matter; the headmaster or the principal matters; the attitudes and influences of your child’s classmates matter; but in the end, you’re responsible. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You’re the one who changed their diapers, showed them how to double-knot their shoes, taught them to say please and thank you, and sat by the bedside when they had the flu. You know this human being better than anyone else in the world. And no matter what anybody else says, you have the right and responsibility to oversee their education.

And with that responsibility comes freedom, maneuverability, and even joy.

Your third-grader is still stumbling over words and sentences in her reader? Pop “Reading Eggs” into the computer for 15 minutes every evening or sit down with a guide to phonics—start with the basics—and spend that quarter-hour on a sofa, sounding out words together.

Your poor 11-year-old still can’t get through the times tables without falling to pieces? The same formula applies here. Put aside that “new math” textbook and devote 15 minutes every evening to chanting the multiplication tables, and in just a few weeks 9 times 7 will be as embedded as 2 times 2.

You want your middle-schoolers to read good literature but have no clue as to which books to select? Buy a copy of Gladys Hunt and Barbara Hampton’s “Honey for a Teen’s Heart: Using Books to Communicate with Teens,” and you’ve just purchased lists and mini-reviews of hundreds of titles that will carry your teen through high school and beyond. Don’t forget her younger brother. Pick up a copy of “Honey for a Child’s Heart: The Imaginative Use of Books in Family Life,” and you’ve purchased that 8-year-old a map and compass into the realm of good literature. (The authors of these guides approach literature with a Christian worldview, though most of the selections are secular. Hunt and Hampton also include, along with explanations, novels such as the Harry Potter books or the Philip Pullman series. Practice your parental discernment, and you’ll be fine.)

Unhappy with the history your high schooler is being taught—or, for that matter, not being taught? Sites such as YouTube are loaded with all sorts of documentaries and historical dramas. More formal instruction, like Wilfred McClay’s text “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story” or the resources at Hillsdale College, is also readily available.

Discouraged and need some inspiration? Read “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story,” the story of neurosurgeon, writer, and politician Ben Carson. He grew up poor in Detroit, and his mother was semi-literate and worked long hours, but she demanded her sons turn off the TV and read books. Soon, those two boys were reading their way through the public library, and from there, the world was their bucketful of oysters. If you need fast emergency inspiration, scout out Janet Denison’s online article “Dr. Ben Carson’s Mom.”

With books and computers at our fingertips, and mentors and tutors available in the guise of relatives and friends, you’re living in an educator’s paradise with countless options just waiting for you.

Think of your role this way. Imagine your child as an actor making a movie. On that set are the usual swarm of people—costume designers, makeup folks, the camera crew, the hairdressers, and all the others who contribute to a film. Only on this set, there are teachers, grandparents, mentors, coaches, tutors, and peers, all of them standing by to make the kid great.

All this scenario lacks is a director. And that’s you. You’re the one with the special chair and the megaphone. You’re the one in charge. All it takes is one good old Hollywood cliché from you—“Lights! Camera! Action!”—and those cameras start rolling, with you guiding the action.

In “What’s Wrong With the World,” a book published more than a century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote, “The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.”

If you haven’t done so already, it’s time to put paid to that idea. Be a hands-on, eyes-on parent educator, and give your children a gift for a lifetime.